Thursday, April 20, 2017

By the end of World War II, much of Europe and Asia, and parts of Africa, lay in ruins. Combat and bombing had flattened cities and towns, destroyed bridges and railroads, and scorched the countryside. The war had also taken a staggering toll in both military and civilian lives.

Shortages of food, fuel, and all kinds of consumer products persisted and in many cases worsened after peace was declared. War-ravaged Europe and Japan could not produce enough goods for their own people, much less for export.

What was needed to pull Europe and Asia back into the international economy? The answer was money - but what kind? The currencies of war-torn countries? Gold? Dollars?

The Most Expensive War in History

In addition to the toll in human lives and suffering, countries spent more money on World War II than in all previous wars put together. By 1945, exhausted countries faced severe economic problems that frustrated reconstruction efforts:

Inflation

Debt (mostly owed to the United States)

Trade deficits

Balance of payments deficits

Depleted gold and dollar supplies

The Dollar Gap

The devastated countries needed gold or U.S. dollars (the only currency considered to be "as good as gold") to pay for imports and make debt payments. However, both dollars and gold were alarmingly scarce in the war-scarred countries.

Many countries retreated from the market. Communist Eastern Europe abandoned it altogether. The world’s multilateral financial and trading system faced a serious threat. Only the United States had emerged from the war with the strength and resources to help. But would it step forward?

Worldwide Gold Shortage

By 1947, the United States had accumulated 70% of the world’s gold reserves. The United Kingdom had gone from being the world's greatest creditor to the world's greatest debtor. Countries had sold off most of their gold and dollar reserves, as well as their foreign investments, to pay for the war. What few reserves remained were now quickly running out. Trade deficits meant there was little hope of replenishing them.

Five cigarettes for an egg? A carton of cigarettes for a piano?

Severe inflation plagued the weakened economies. By 1948, wholesale prices were 200% higher in Austria, 1,820% higher in France, and a massive 10,100% higher in Japan than they had been before the war. In 1948, the French government devalued the franc by 80%, making a 5,000 franc note practically worthless. In some countries like Germany, the monetary system collapsed. People resorted to barter, often using cigarettes as money.

Cooperation Tested

The economic situation looked grim in 1947. Forty-four countries had agreed to international economic cooperation at Bretton Woods, but the IMF and the World Bank were not yet in a position to provide the needed expertise and financial assistance. Would countries return to the unilateral beggar-thy-neighbor policies of high tariffs and competitive devaluations?

Potential Solution

Many hoped that the United States would provide economic aid to help resolve the crisis. In contrast to the other combatants, the United States ended the war as the world's greatest creditor, with most of the world's gold, a substantial balance of payments surplus, and virtually no physical damage to its own land. Would the United States offer additional dollar aid? Could the European countries cooperate with one another and the United States to solve their persistent problems and return to prosperity?

Limited Options for Economic Recovery

Desperate countries could gain the dollars they needed only through:

Exporting more than they imported (balance of trade surplus)

Private investments or loans from the United States

U.S. government aid or loans

However, the devastation caused by the war eliminated any hope of a trade surplus. Chaos and uncertainty in the European economies discouraged private US investments. It seemed that only additional government aid or loans could work.

Cooperation

Trade Links Encourage Expansion:

The United States gives dollars to Country A.

Country A uses dollars to increase domestic production and pay for imports.

Country A's economy expands by selling more domestic products to, and buying more imports from, other countries.

Other economies (including the U.S. economy) expand by selling more domestic products to, and buying more imports from, Country A.

Noncooperation

Without Trade Links, Economies Miss Out on Expansion:

The United States does not provide dollars to Country A.

Country A is unable to increase domestic production and unable to afford imports.

Country A's economy fails to expand, with few products to export and little foreign exchange to buy imports.

Other economies (including the US economy) fail to expand, unable to sell domestic products to, or buy imports from, Country A.

US Decision

The Case Against

Over $9 billion had been spent already on aid to Europe in the immediate postwar period:

The United States could not afford to give away more money to other countries. There were pressing needs at home.

Existing shortages in the United States would be exacerbated and wholesale prices would rise, causing inflation.

If the United States did nothing, Europe would solve its own economic problems.

The Case For

The United States must act for security, humanitarian, and economic reasons:

If the United States did not help, Soviet-supported Communists could make inroads into vulnerable Western European countries.

Innocent people in Europe were suffering from shortages of basic necessities.

The United States could lose its main export markets if Europe could not find dollars or gold to purchase US products.

"And yet the whole world of the future hangs on a proper judgment...What are sufferings?What is needed?What must be done?"

George C. Marshall,
US Secretary of State
Harvard University,
June 5, 1947

Cooperation for Recovery: The Marshall Plan

Dollar Catalyst

In his historic speech at Harvard's graduation ceremony in June 1947, George Marshall announced the U.S. plan to give additional economic aid to Europe. The offer was made to all of Europe, including the U.S. wartime enemies and the Communist countries of Eastern Europe. However, the recipients would be required to work together to formulate a unified recovery plan.

The European Response

"When the Marshall Plan proposals were announced, I grabbed them with both hands. I felt that it was the first chance we had ever been given since the end of the war to look at [the] European economy as a whole."

Ernest Bevin
British Foreign Secretary

Sixteen European countries responded by cooperating on a general reconstruction plan that was accepted by the United States. In the end, a total of $13.6 billion (equivalent to $88 billion in 1997 money) was appropriated to the plan. The Marshall Plan was a success. By 1950, the participating countries had returned to, or exceeded, their prewar production levels.

The European Recovery Program (ERP - The Marshall Plan) helped Europe to:

Finance its imports and debts without the burden of future repayment

Replace, rebuild and expand both private industry and public infrastructure

Eliminate bottlenecks in production

Restore consumption to a politically acceptable level

Establish and fund the European Payments Union to promote multilateral, rather than bilateral, trade

Eliminate the worldwide dollar shortage

Conditionality

Marshall aid came with "conditionality" - countries wishing to participate had to agree to:

Develop multilateral payment and trade within Europe

Move toward currency convertibility

Move toward eliminating discrimination against U.S. imports

Encourage reductions in public spending

Relax government controls such as rationing

Increase exports to the United States

U.S. Dollars: Fueling the Economy

Even after Marshall Plan aid ended, the United States continued to provide economic assistance to other countries. In addition, as the "Cold War" heated up, US military expenditures abroad rose, particularly during the country's involvement in the Korean War (1950-53). And even more important, US investment abroad grew substantially after World War II.

The outflow of US dollars provided liquidity, which fueled the growing world economy.

IMF Loans

Egypt's 1956 takeover of the Suez Canal provoked an unsuccessful and costly joint U.K.-French military operation. The United Kingdom and France suffered severe financial consequences as a result. They turned to the IMF, which provided them with its largest financial assistance to date.

$262 million to France

$1.2 billion to the United Kingdom

US Government Foreign Aid and Spending

Just as the Marshall Plan aid was ending, US military and nonmilitary aid picked up. The continuous outflow of US dollars helped reduce Europe's balance of payments deficit and the worldwide dollar shortage.

Economic Miracles in the 1950s

Europe had recovered its prewar productive capacity by 1950; Japan, by 1952. Their economies grew rapidly over the following decade. As a result, international financial accounts gradually moved toward balance. The dollar shortage had been eliminated.

The System Works

In 1958, the monetary system agreed upon at Bretton Woods was validated when eleven European countries declared their currencies externally convertible. Others were to follow in the next few years.

The dollar-gold exchange standard, based on fixed exchange rates and overseen by the IMF, could finally be realized.

Problems on the Horizon

After 1950, the United States began to register balance of payments deficits. At first, the deficits were welcomed, because the United States enjoyed:

A strong trade balance

Ample gold reserves

A small outflow of private capital

The U.S. government believed that the deficits demonstrated US leadership in providing expanding markets and finance. The US balance of payments deficits provided $7 billion of an $8.5 billion increase in world liquidity during the 1950s. The increase in liquidity enabled the international economy to grow at a record rate.

How long could the United States afford huge deficits without harming its own economy?

And if the United States reduced its deficits, who would provide additional liquidity to allow the world economy to continue growing?

Thursday, April 13, 2017

From the 1870s until World War I, the United Kingdom served as the leading financial and banking center of the world, while gold ruled as the monetary standard of all the major trading countries. Each country pegged its currency to gold at a constant and unchanging rate. The international gold standard system ushered in a period of unprecedented stability and prosperity - at least for the middle and upper classes in the industrial countries.

Gold and Stability

The gold standard provided monetary discipline. Because governments were required to convert domestic currency into gold on request, the amount of currency they could print was limited by the amount of gold in their reserves.

Exchange rates never varied in the classical gold system. This made exchanging money much easier for travelers. American Express even printed the exact amount of foreign currency exchange right on its traveler's cheques.

Industrial Revolution

Technological advances in the nineteenth century produced more goods and created more efficient ways of transporting them across national borders. Governments increasingly recognized the need for easy and convenient currency convertibility. The United Kingdom, economic and financial leader of the world, had based its currency on gold since the early nineteenth century. In the 1870s, Germany and other major trading countries followed its lead and converted to the gold standard.

Meltdown

World War I marked the end of an economic era. Faced with an urgent need for more liquidity, the combatant countries took their currencies off the stabilizing gold standard and printed more money. This triggered high inflation, which persisted after the war.

Economic Consequences of the Peace

The postwar settlement, known as the Treaty of Versailles, exacerbated tensions and economic instability rather than fostering growth and cooperation. The European allies, especially France and the United Kingdom, felt that the losers should compensate them for the cost of the war by paying reparations. In 1921, Germany's reparations alone were fixed at 132 billion gold marks almost twice its prewar national income.

Cost of the World War

As this contemporary illustration graphically shows, the cost of the "World War" was staggering when compared with the costs of earlier hostilities. Governments were forced to stop redeeming their currencies for gold, since they had to print so much paper money to pay for the war.

Postwar Conundrum

The defeated countries had no gold to pay their reparations. Their economies were exhausted, and the peace terms offered little hope of earning gold through exports.

Without the reparations money, the allies could not repay their war loans from the United States.

The United States refused to cancel the allies' debts, insisting that the loans represented commercial transactions.

What will "the next war" cost?

Impossible Debt

Finally, the German, Austrian, Hungarian, Polish, and Bulgarian monetary systems collapsed under runaway inflation called hyperinflation. The United States loaned money to Germany through the Dawes Plan. This loan, along with private investment, enabled the defeated countries to make scaled-down reparations payments. However, the victors collected only a small fraction of the reparations, and the United States eventually had to cancel the remaining debts of its allies.

Global Depression

Normalcy returned with the reestablishment of the gold standard in the mid-1920s, but imbalances plagued the monetary system. The prewar fixed exchange rates no longer reflected the relative economic strengths of the major countries:

The U.K. pound was greatly overvalued.

The U.S. dollar and French franc were undervalued.

The Great Depression Arrives

By the end of the decade, economic and financial troubles had spread around the world. Many factors contributed:

A decline in prices of primary products devastated the economies of such countries as Argentina, Australia, and Chile.

Beginning in 1928, Americans cut back on their investments abroad to capitalize on the booming U.S. stock market. The loss of capital hurt first Germany, which counted on US investments to pay its war reparations, and then the European victors, who relied on Germany’s reparations to repay their own war debts.

The 1929 US stock market crash left the United States in financial chaos and accelerated the withdrawal of capital from abroad.

Trade, production, and employment rates fell throughout the world in a dizzying spiral. The Great Depression had arrived. How would the world respond?

International Response:

Beggar-Thy-Neighbor Policies

Instead of cooperating with one another, countries tried to solve their economic problems unilaterally.

To protect domestic industry:

Governments devalued their currencies to make their exports cheaper for foreign buyers and to make imports more expensive for their own citizens.

Governments also raised tariffs to make imports more expensive for their own citizens.

By selling more and buying less abroad, countries should have created jobs at home and improved their balance of payments positions. But one country’s exports are another’s imports, so these policies, adopted by many countries at the same time, only succeeded in drastically decreasing world trade and worsening the depression.

Worldwide Financial Chaos

Austria’s largest bank, the Vienna Kreditanstalt, collapsed in May 1931. Banking panic spread into Germany and Hungary and eventually forced the United Kingdom off the gold standard. Other countries soon followed in abandoning gold.

Failure to Cooperate

A World Monetary Conference was held in London in the summer of 1933, in hopes that a cooperative effort to restore prosperity might succeed where unilateral attempts had failed. The organizers sought agreement on:

Restoring the gold standard

Reducing tariffs, import quotas, and other barriers to trade

General international coordination of economic policies

Unfortunately, the conference failed. Participants could not come to any significant agreement.

Depression Lingers

The results of the world’s failure to cooperate were devastating. Continued unilateral efforts by individual countries only succeeded in deepening and prolonging economic woe.

World unemployment peaked at nearly 30% in 1932 and remained in double digits through the decade.

At its lowest point, total world trade sank to just 35% of its 1929 value.

Keynesian Revolution

To help alleviate the Great Depression, some countries adopted policies based on the theories of economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes argued that during slow economic times, the government should jump-start the economy by spending money to create jobs and boost demand.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the United States was an example of the Keynesian approach. In the end, massive military spending finally succeeded in stimulating the global economy and ending the Great Depression.

Political Consequences

The political consequences of the mistakes made after World War I and during the Depression included the rise of totalitarianism and the outbreak of World War II.

The End of the War is in Sight. . .

Road to Cooperation

The desire for economic cooperation stemmed from fear of repeating the post-World War I mistakes that had led to inflation, financial instability, and the Great Depression. While World War II still raged, Allied policy makers debated several plans for international monetary stability:

The U.S. proposal by Harry Dexter White

The U.K. proposal by John Maynard Keynes

Proposals from France and Canada

Keynes called for an International Currency Union, which would function as a "central bank" for the central banks of each country. White, on the other hand, called for a fund to which all member countries would contribute. Both agreed on fixed, but adjustable, exchange rates based on gold.

Bretton Woods

Travel to the United States was difficult and treacherous in the midst of the war, but, incredibly, representatives from 44 countries managed to gather for a conference at Bretton Woods in New Hampshire. Their ambitious goal - to design the framework for postwar international economic cooperation. D-Day had taken place three weeks previously, giving the delegates hope that the war would soon end.

How Could Leaders Ensure a Future of Global Peace and Prosperity?

New Economic World Order

The Bretton Woods meeting was a smashing success. After much delicate negotiation and hard work, the delegates agreed on the fundamental principles of a new monetary system to encourage economic stability and prosperity. Two intergovernmental institutions were created to further these principles:

The International Monetary Fund

The World Bank

Soon after, delegates meeting at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., set up the United Nations, the political counterpart to the Bretton Woods institutions.

International Monetary Fund and World Bank

Bretton Woods: July 1-22, 1944

The Bretton Woods meeting resulted in the founding of the IMF and the World Bank, twin intergovernmental pillars supporting the structure of the world's economic and financial order. The World Bank finances economic development, while the IMF oversees the international monetary system.

The IMF

The founders felt that a fundamental condition for international prosperity was an orderly monetary system that would encourage trade, create jobs, expand economic activity, and raise living standards throughout the world. The IMF was charged with:

Helping each country set a fixed, but changeable, exchange rate for its currency based on gold

Assisting members that have temporary balance of payments difficulties by providing short- to medium-term credit

Overseeing the international monetary system

United Nations

Dumbarton Oaks: August 27-October 7, 1944

The Dumbarton Oaks meeting resulted in proposals to create the United Nations, an intergovernmental forum for solving international problems and disputes. The proposals were adopted at the subsequent meeting in San Francisco in 1945.

John Maynard Keynes (1944):

"All of us here have the greatest sense of elation. All in all, quite extraordinary harmony has prevailed. As an experiment in international cooperation, the conference has been an outstanding success."

Saturday, April 8, 2017

By 1943, it became increasingly clear that WW2 was going to end in success for the Allied forces, and thus there was increasing interest amongst politicians and economists regarding post-war re-construction. In 1944 in the New Hampshire town of Bretton Woods, 44 allied nations agreed on a new system of international monetary management which, it was hoped, would promote stability and ultimately, peace.

A well-known and inescapable trade-off in monetary economics is that a country with its own currency can either choose a fixed value for its currency vis-a-vis other global currencies, or it can choose a floating value for its currency, whereby the market determines exchange rates relative to other global currencies. There are merits and drawbacks of both systems, with some countries having tried to establish a half-way solution with varying success. A fixed system is advantageous for trade as it reduces uncertainty around a country's values of imports and exports. A floating system however, allows monetary responses to shocks (such as recessions, or high demand during war). The norm since 1870/80 was for all major economies to have a fixed exchange rate system based on free convertibility to gold (this has become known as the ‘Gold Standard'). During the period 1870-1914, global trade tripled. The huge gains from international trade in the 19th century and an absence of stability costs (such as cyclical unemployment) resulted in the persistence of a global fixed exchange system.

The onset of the Great Depression, however, undermined this global consensus on the advantages of the Gold Standard. A collapse in global trade (assisted by the erosion of free trade and the adoption of protectionist policies) significantly reduced the trade gains of a fixed system. Furthermore, programs of fiscal and monetary expansions and competitive devaluations to combat the depression required a degree of flexibility which was not achievable within a fixed system. Thus, in the years running up to the beginning of WW2, many countries abandoned the Gold Standard which, arguably, further heralded the coming of global conflict.

John Maynard Keynes and his American counter-part Dexter White were the principal economists behind the design of a new fixed exchange system – the Bretton Woods system. There emerged a broad consensus amongst the allies that sustained peace would be brought about by eliminating high tariffs, trade barriers, and unfair economic competition so that no nation would become jealous of another's living standards which could ultimately breed the grievances that lead to war. The US also had an incentive to depart from the reparation policies and isolationist stance it had taken in 1918 and to provide liquidity and dollars to the war-ravaged countries of Europe to stave off a growing fear of communism sweeping the continent. The Bretton Woods system ultimately sacrificed capital mobility (the ability for investors to freely move capital from one country to another) so that countries could have a fixed exchange rate (all currencies were pegged directly or in-directly to the dollar, which in turn was pegged to gold). However, governments could also pursue expansionary monetary and fiscal policies by restricting trades in currency, so that effective Keynesian demand policies (such as public works programs) could be enacted in the post-war period.

The widespread adoption and acceptance of this system by the non-communist nations after WW2 helped to spur a so-called 'Golden Age' of capitalism, where rapid growth in productivity and living standards was witnessed across the developed world. The importance of global stability ensured by the functioning of the Bretton Woods system facilitated the prosperity of this period and indeed led UK Prime minister Harold Macmillan to proclaim in 1957 that the British people had 'never had it so good'. However, the Bretton Woods system was ultimately flawed, and would only last until the 1970s, ending any notion of a 'Golden Age' and plunging the global economy into a decade of low growth and recession.

Saturday, April 1, 2017

Here is an interview hosted by one of our representatives from the United States, Mr. Yves Jacques. ("YJ").He recently spoke to Francois de Siebenthal. ("FS"), who is a former banker from Switzerland,Interview Subject: The crisis in the financial world today and what solutions he would suggest to correct the chaos that is occuring.The Interview Begins:

François de Siebenthal

YJ: Francois, you are from Switzerland, trained as a professional banker and economist, is that correct?

FS: Yes.

YJ: And you’ve been an economist for how many years?

FS: For more than twenty-five years.

YJ: Some textbooks and other sources mislead people by saying that banks lend from the depositors savings. Can you tell us what really happens?

FS: The truth is that credit makes deposits, and not the other way around. This means that, for example, more than 90% of the money in circulation was created out of thin air. We can estimate that 99.99% of the United States dollar was created out of nothing. We call that Fiat Money, or Ex Nihilo. The problem is that, on the whole, they have been using the credit system to sustain the growth of the United States, to conserve the American economy at the cost of the poor of the world.

Recently the financiers even used the real estate market of the United States to uphold the credit industry. They have created massive amounts of credit (Ex Nihilo) as loans for real estate, and then sold the American mortgages to investors such as Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac at huge profits. They then used the massive import of funds and savings from all over the world to tell the American people that the value of the American industry is rising all the time. But now we have reached a limit in credibility and it (the American dollar) is starting to downslide. It has lost 60% of its value already since the beginning of the Iraq war. The entire system is a lie, and it is causing a massive lack of confidence, and of faith…

When credit is created only to sustain the virtual growth of the economy, there are various ways to get out of it. One of them would be to create a general war with millions of victims, or a bloody revolution, or even a credit crunch such as Japan experienced with its liquidity trap and massive depopulation, or then again, a general collapse of the economy such as what happened in 1929.

YJ: So, this is their solution?

FS: Yes, from my point of view the International Bankers are planning new wars and revolutions. I think that the best solution would be to do as the poor people of the United States did in 1929; establish local banks with 6,000 local currency systems. We can improve all those local systems and coordinate them, like a franchising chain of free and open local banks sharing the same values that are open to all people of good will.

You can find such a proposition at www.pavie.ch with all the details on how to function with this local system, as they are already doing in some poor countries.

The dollar will collapse for sure, and you need to persuade everyone to start local systems, improved LETS (Local exchange systems) with dividends and compensated discounts (see social credit on the internet). In fact, the dollar is collapsing faster now; its value is going down all the time. For instance, when I began in the banking business the dollar was nearly four Swiss francs to one dollar. Now, it is one Swiss franc to one dollar. So it is, in fact, a massive inflation. If a Swiss, for example, wants to buy a Chevrolet, he must convert it to cheese, watches, machinery and other goods. If an American wants to buy a Swiss watch, he pays in dollars. And what is a dollar? It is a piece of paper on which is printed, "One dollar: in God we trust" or just some bits in a computer.

YJ: Do you think that the reason they want the US dollar to collapse in the United States is because they want to change it for the Amero?

FS: Yes. What they are doing is the same as they did in 1929. The banks print and open more credits to buy more assets very cheap, that way they control more of the people and you can do nothing without their consent. The Patriot Act is a method of dictatorship and they suddenly wanted to change all the notes and put RFID devices in all the currency.

YJ: What do you think of people who say we should exchange US dollars to Euros or Japanese Yen?

FS: If the dollar is collapsing and the same people are behind the Euro or the Yen, it will all come to the same conclusion. Let’s talk about the Japanese Yen. In Japan there is a big, big problem with the population. One third of the Japanese population will disappear before 2050. It is already beginning. There will be a massive depreciation in the real estate markets and this will create a huge crisis, even bigger than the United States, because the Japanese will not allow immigration. The only solution I can foresee for the Japanese is a massive drop in the price of properties. Already I have information from Japan that they are pushing to establish euthanasia. You know the situation is really a war, a war against the weakest in society. They are buying a lot of robots to cope with this trend. The truth is that they want a massive reduction in the population; by the billions… Julian Simon said in his book "The Ultimate Resource 1" that he was paid by those people to prove that the earth was overpopulated, however he wrote books and articles proving exactly the opposite.

The Ultimate Resource (now The Ultimate Resource 2) and Population Matters discuss trends in the United States and the world with respect to resources, environment, population and the interactions between them. Simon concludes that there is no reason why material life on earth should not continue to improve, and that increasing population contributes to that improvement in the long run. Those popularly-written books developed positive ideas and foresaw the falling natural resource prices, increased world oil supply, and decline in farmland prices. His view of population economics is unique and persuasive. In the discussion, he covers resources, environment, population growth with analytical methods.

As said on Amazon, Julian L. Simon is the world’s greatest contrarian. The Ultimate Resource 2–an update, not a sequel–skewers the sacred cows of environmentalism, population control, and Paul Ehrlich. In the contest between resource scarcity and human ingenuity, Simon bets the farm on the ability of intelligent people to overcome their problems. Thankfully, he is not a theorist. This book lays out convincing empirical evidence for his prediction of a prosperous future. The keys to progress are not state-run conservation programs, he says, but economic and politicial freedom. Only then can talented minds properly apply themselves to their earthly dilemmas.

He wrote in his book "Population matters" how he was ostracized by the "rulers" of the new world disorder.

The last book about this type of manipulation is by Steve Mosher. The book is entitled Population Control and it does not simply outline the problems; it proposes a solution as well. Mosher dedicates his final chapter to possible ways that developed nations can avoid the demographic disaster that now threatens. Small tax credits and paltry child subsidies are not nearly enough. Young couples, he argues, need to be sheltered from taxes altogether. And population control programs need to be discontinued as soon as possible. Mosher ends by quoting the late Julian Simon: "Human beings are the ultimate resource." We need everybody to find good solutions.

The members of those Clubs hate poor people. Most of these wealthy New World Order people are racists, in fact they are racists of the worst kind. They condition people to believe that our earth is overpopulated. And so the poor are corralled like cattle into big cities such as Mexico, just to control them and prove that they are right. But in fact, the rest of the earth is empty. The world is huge and we can feed more people. Ramses of Egypt, in the Bible, had this way of thinking and he killed all the male Jews. Now we have "white" bankers living in New York, London and Paris doing the same well-paid job; killing millions or even billions of aborted children with financial soft Gulags to earn billions of dollars.

I recommend this film: "Freedom to Fascism" from the filmmaker Aaron Russo, who exposed his first-hand knowledge of the elite global agenda during a live video interview with Alex Jones’ nationally syndicated radio show.

Nick Rockefeller told Russo about the plan to microchip the population, (see Bilderberg and micro-chip on the internet) and warned him about "an event that would allow us to invade Afghanistan and Iraq" some eleven months before 9/11. Rockefeller foretold that the "War on Terror" would be a hoax where soldiers would be looking in caves for non-existent enemies. Rockefeller also tried to recruit Aaron Russo into the Council on Foreign Relations during the tenure of their friendship. A picture sent by the Russo family verifies that friendship, and strengthens evidence of a global agenda of which Rockefeller’s creation of women’s lib, and the elite’s ultimate plan for world population reduction and a micro-chipped society, played important roles.

YJ: Can you explain to us briefly, how money is created today and how it should be created? Then maybe we can speak about the practice of interest.

FS: In the United States most of the money, as credit-bearing interest, is created by the Federal Reserve Board and other private banks. The Federal Reserve is about as Federal as the Federal Express. That means that it is a private company owned by a few people. I have a list of about 12 families who are the shareholders that own the Federal Reserve. These people are using this private business for their own personal gain, to generate private profits of trillions (yes, trillions) of dollars. If you add the amounts that are generated every year since Christmas of 1913, sums hidden in various foundations and trusts in tax haven "paradises," the profits are unbelieveable. Wars are for their own profit only and not for the benefit of the American people.

And on the credit base, which is called M zero, you have a massive creation of money, and this credit is based on nothing. Alan Greenspan said that they create the money out of thin air. You have the statistics published by the Federal Reserve (which is a private company) that show that it is allowing and emitting credit to the other banks or other financial vehicles.

A few months before his assassination, President John F. Kennedy was summoned by his father Joseph to the lobby of the White House. He said to him, "If you do this, they will kill you!" But the President was not deterred. On June 4, 1963, he signed Executive Order number 111 110, that repealed the Act and Executive Order number 10,289, calling the production of banknotes into the hands of the state and depriving the cartel of private banks of a large part of their power. After $4 billion of US dollars in small denominations called "United States Notes" had already been put into circulation, and while the state was preparing to deliver even larger cuts of Fed currency, Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. This happened 100 years after Lincoln’s death. He had created debt-free "Greenback" notes for the United States as well, and he was murdered by a sniper. Kennedy’s successor Lyndon B. Johnson suspended the printing of the notes for an inexplicable reason. The twelve Federal Reserve banks withdrew the Kennedy banknotes immediately from circulation and exchanged them with their own acknowledgements of debt. A few of those notes are still in the hands of Imelda Marcos because her husband was trying to escape the system.

And now with the sub-prime crisis, they are printing millions or trillions of dollars but we don’t know exactly where this money is going. Perhaps it is going to sustain the banks that are in bankruptcy. Crooks are sustaining crooks. And of course, all of this money is created with an interest rate. This interest rate is imposed on the American population mainly through taxes, on the backs of the poor people. For one example, see the LTCM 3 Trillion dollar scandal under Clinton, and other similar situations. The poor of the world cannot eat; they are starving. And the worse problem is that babies are not even allowed to live! Their goal is to have fewer people that are more easily controlled with laws that are becoming even more and more stupid. One such case is Monsanto, a plant that patents pigs or plants and ruins farmers; their goal is to raise the price of food, all the while saying that they are working for the good of humanity…

The Fed began with approximately 300 people or banks that became owners (stockholders purchasing stock at $100 per share–the stock is not publicly traded) in the Federal Reserve banking system. They make up an international banking cartel of wealth that has no comparison. The Fed collects billions of dollars annually in interest and distributes the profits to its shareholders. Congress illegally gave the Fed the right to print money (through the Treasury) at no interest to the Fed. The Fed then creates money from nothing, and loans it back to us through the banks, and charges interest on our currency. The Fed also buys Government debt with money printed on a printing press and then charges US taxpayers interest. Many Congressmen and Presidents have said that this is fraud.

Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency from 1920-21, accused the Federal Reserve of deliberately causing the Great Depression. In several speeches made shortly after he lost the chairmanship of the Committee, McFadden claimed that the Federal Reserve was run by Wall Street banks and their affiliated European banking houses.

McFadden said: Mr. Chairman, we have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks. The Federal Reserve Board, which is a Government board, has cheated the Government of the United States out of enough money to pay the national debt. The twelve credit monopolies that were deceitfully and disloyally foisted upon this country by the bankers who came here from Europe and repaid us for our hospitality by undermining our American institutions…The people have a valid claim against the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks. For the text of his entire speech, see this website:http://www.afn.org/~govern/mcfadden_speech_1932.html

McFadden was killed in the same way as Kennedy and Lincoln and many other opponents to those who control this system of usury.

"Quid prodest scelus, is fecit" which means: "The one who takes profit from the crime, has done it."

So who owns the Federal Reserve Central Banks? The true ownership of the 12 Central banks, a very well kept secret, has been partially revealed. This is a list of some names:

Rothschild Bank of London

Warburg Bank of Hamburg

Rothschild Band of Berlin

Lehman Brothers of New York

Kuhn Loeb Bank of New York

Israel Moses Seif Banks of Italy

Goldman, Sachs of New York

Warburg Bank of Amsterdam

Chase Manhattan Bank of New York

Lazard Brothers Bank of Paris

These bankers are all connected to London Banking Houses in the totally free City which ultimately controls the Fed. When England lost the Revolutionary War with America (our forefathers were fighting their own government), they planned to control us by taking over our banking system, the printing of our money, and our debt.

The individuals listed below owned banks which in turn owned shares in the Fed. The banks listed below have significant control over the New York Fed District, which controls the other 11 Fed Districts. These banks also are partially foreign owned and control the New York Fed District Bank:

First National Bank of New York - James Stillman

National City Bank, New York - Mary W. Harnman

National Bank of Commerce, New York - A.D. Juillard

Hanover National Bank, New York - Jacob Schiff

Chase National Bank, New York - Thomas F. Ryan, Paul Warburg, William Rockefeller,

YJ: Well, I think this interview will help the people understand the system a bit more, and what is happening today.

FS: It is better to fight this way, and create a credit club or a local system with coupons free of interest as we wrote about in the "Michael Journal" with the example of Madagascar and the Philippines, than to take out your gun and fight a war!

YJ: The truth is blinding and people do not see it. They want a complicated system, but in fact the solution is very simple.

FS: During the Great Depression in the 30’s the citizens started 6,000 local systems, local credit systems all over the United States. Tell people to study the history of their country. While they were creating their own credits, the big banks were stopped. Do the same! Improve it with Social Credit systems and dividends to share the profits of the robots and computers! 90% of the workload will be done by computers and robots, the challenge is how is distribute the abundance.

YJ: Well, I think that’s the plan of the Pilgrims of St. Michael, we want to start the local exchange systems all over the world. I know that in Columbia they have several systems that are working very well.

FS: In the United States, your grandfathers were the organizers of the local systems. Ask them how it was done. You had more than 6,000 systems all over the United States. The WIR system in Switzerland has made our country one of the richest in the world. (www.wir.ch) Just think of what happened in Argentina when the banks collapsed there. That can happen in the United States as well.

Maurice Allais, Professor of Economics at the National School of Mining Engineering in Paris, France and the 1988 Nobel Prize Winner in Economics, had this to say in his book "Les Conditions Monetaires d’une Economie de Marche" ("The Monetary Conditions of a Market Economy" p. 2): "In essence, the present creation of money, out of nothing, by the banking system is, I do not hesitate to say it in order to make people clearly realize what is at stake here, similar to the creation of money by counterfeiters so rightly condemned by law. In concrete terms, it leads to the same results."

We need to practice all five Shabbats and Jubilees, every 7 days, weeks, months, years and 49 years ( 7 times 7 years) and fight usury at all levels, because usury kills.

Please read this extract from Louis Even. "But what about the term ‘usury practiced under another form’ used by the Pope? Does it mean too high an interest rate? If so, of what percentage? Or is it something else, and under what form?"

An English priest named Father Drinkwater, wrote a book in 1935 that identified this "devouring usury under another form" that is the monopolization of credit, which was to amount more and more to a monopolization of money, although the workings of this monopolization of credit were still mysterious to almost everyone at that time.

Father Drinkwater recorded that a committee based at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, had prepared some elements for the drafting of Rerum Novarum, and that among the members of this committee there was at least one person from Austria who was well aware of the money question and of bank credit. A text that this Austrian had prepared and that was apparently approved by the committee, showed clearly how mere bank money–which is created in banks and consists basically of figures written in bank-books and ledgers, and which was already becoming the major monetary instrument for trade and industry–was nothing but the monetization of the production capacity of the whole community. The new money thus created can only be social in nature (belonging to all of society), and not the property of the bank. This new money is social because of its basis: the community, or society, and because it can buy any good or service in the country. The control of this source of money therefore puts in the hands of those who exercise it, a discretionary power over all economic life.

The text of this Austrian expert also showed that banks do not lend their depositors’ money, but rather deposits that they create out of nothing simply by inscribing figures in bank-books. When banks lend money–no account is diminished in the bank–they do not have to extract one penny from their safes. So the interest charged on their loans is certainly usury: whatever its rate–it is actually more than 100%, since it is interest charged on a capital of zero, nil–the lender (the bank) does not have to do without the money he lends, he just creates it! This usury can rightly be described as "devouring", since banks require creditors to pay back money that has never been created, that has never been put into circulation. (Banks create the principal they lend, but not the interest.) It is therefore mathematically impossible to pay back all loans; the only way for the economy in such a system to keep going is to borrow again to pay the interest, which creates un-repayable private and public debts.

What was the exact wording of this text about the monopoly of credit? One cannot know, since there is no mention of it in the encyclical. Was it suppressed in Fribourg in the final draft sent to Rome? Was it stolen between Fribourg and Rome, or between its arrival in Rome and its delivery to the Sovereign Pontiff? Or was it Pope Leo XIII who decided to put it aside? Fr. Drinkwater raises these questions, but gives no answer. End of quote. This scandal is producing the same absurd situation as in Canada.

And finally let us quote Mackenzie King, who stated while he was campaigning to become Prime Minister of Canada in 1935: "Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile." For more graphs depicting our financial situation see our webiste: http://www.michaeljournal.org/images/croisdet2.gif and http://www.michaeljournal.org/images/debtcan.jpg

YJ: We thank you for this interview with us, Mr. De Siebenthal; you are included in our prayers and our support for you and your family.

FS: You are welcome, be assured of our prayers as well, and all the best to you. If you need any further information, please do not hesitate to ask me. You may email me at: siebenthal@gmail.com